Anyone who reads my posts here knows that I'm just about the cheapest bastard here. So naturally, I started brewing using bleach as my sole sanitizing agent. (Well, that and some one-step that I got for free.) I rinsed with hot tap water and didn't worry about it. No infections, no chlorine tastes, no nothing.

But I switched to Iodophor and am very happy with it. It's still quite cheap (cheaper than one-step or star san), and I really like the convenience of very short contact times and no-rinse. Just for the time it takes off bottling alone, it's worth the slightly higher expense over bleach, IMHO. Yeah, it's messy and discolors plastic tubes. Oh well.

What data does anyone have on this? I've heard hours, weeks, and it's good if it's still amber.

Someone posted an interview on here with the president (I think) of BTF...according to him the answer is, as long as it's still amber. For me, it loses it's color in about 12 hours, tho if it's in a white plastic bucket the staining makes it look colored for a long time after that, which IMHO is leading some to think it's still active.

Nobody said they were rinsing with DIRTY water, just HOT water.
If you boil your rinse water to sanitize it, then it can be QUITE useful for rinsing bleach off of your gear while not compromising the sanitation effort.

This is how I sanitized for over 7 years of brewing. I just eventually got sick of boiling water and rinsing and switched to Iodophor.

Um, nobody mentioned how hot the water was either.

Seems kinda labor intensive to me, as well as a waste of resources and time. I'm happy that you have had such terrific results with Iodophor.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Baron von BeeGee

I'm not following. Many, many homebrewers have used bleach for sanitation purposes for years without incident. I'd say the empirical evidence suggests there's a very valid point for using it.

If it works for you, and it ain't broke don't fix it. This is just my subjective opinion on this matter.

That's how it TASTES, but I am actually in awe of the precision with which AB and the other megaswill companies brew their products. Something that light in color and taste takes squeaky-clean and heavily-controlled care to produce. Any off taste at all would stick WAY out.

millions and millions of gallons of the stuff, and not a single noticable difference across batches.... amazing. Terrible beer, but amazing production process.